Forum:2019-03-08 (Friday)
Discussion for comic for . Veni, vidi, wiki (I came, I saw, I edited). ---- I'm just not going to get started on "the fourth dimension is duration." ➤ I am even more confused than usual about what's happening on this page -- well, really, what's happening in the next-to-last panel. (I do get that Higgs is old, but... No, I'm not going to get started on that.) That looks like Purple, but without the fishtank, and with his head on fire. Is he still on the balcony in that panel, or has he just been summoned onstage? And what is done? And, still, what help does he need from Tarvek and Higgs? Bkharvey (talk) 06:11, March 8, 2019 (UTC) :He is processing on something pertaining to Higgs to better temporally anchor the mere mortal, which results in his form taking on something even less comprehensible for a moment... I guess. My wondering is this: Is Friendly Eldritch Horror Who May Be The Boilerghast coming to this observation simply because Higgs is old, or is it also because he has processed Dynewater in his body? --MadCat221 (talk) 06:31, March 8, 2019 (UTC) :: Why do you pick Dynewater (Jägerbrau, actually, not quite the same thing, we're told) rather than any other characteristic of Jägers? E.g., can see the invisible Mechanicsburg police force? Since there aren't any young Jägers, it's hard to know how to research your question. I guess Agatha has drunk Dynewater, so maybe we'll eventually find out if she suffers time confusion around Purple. ➤ ::: Oh, I see what you mean! You're not interested in a young person who's had Dynewater; you want to know whether, say, Albia is immune to Purple. But she has gazed into the infinite, so she has something as good as Dynewater. You really want to test Voltaire, who achieved long life without mysterious elixirs, but it's too late to make that experiment. ➤ :: Oh, I see what you mean! The "it" in "it is done" is fixing Tarvek! I had been thinking that Higgs would have to anchor Tarvek throughout the episode, rather than changing Tarvek himself in some way. Bkharvey (talk) 07:26, March 8, 2019 (UTC) ::: The change to Tarvek may be a mental/spiritual link to some aspect of the longevity of Higgs. (Anchoring one to the other is probably a change to both.) Argadi (talk) 14:12, March 8, 2019 (UTC) I am sure that temporally anchoring Tarvek to a near-immortal being will have absolutely no side effects or unintended consequenses. 9thGeneral (talk) 17:16, March 8, 2019 (UTC) :You beat me to it! I noticed that Purple never said how long this anchoring would last, so whatever effects this has on Tarvek's mind and timeline could last quite a while... Quantheory (talk) 20:33, March 8, 2019 (UTC) Perhaps our newest friend needs help because he would "exist at" the portal and cause effects he would like to avoid.9thGeneral (talk) 17:16, March 8, 2019 (UTC) I notice that Tarvek and Higgs have only been cycling through the same few minutes of time. (At least, I assume that it's a few minutes, and not hours and hours that they spend on the balcony between meeting Purple and the summoning.) I wonder if Purple can only "see" a limited distance into the future as well. That would explain why his plan seems so improvised, and why he acts so much more "human" than the Dreen; if he's only just recently been able to foresee what would happen during the summoning, he may still be rushing to put a plan together to do something about it. : Purple seems to see past, present, and future simultaneously but can sort them out with concentration. Since he affects the "local" few minutes, perhaps that is what he perceives as well. When we are finished with this segment, I hope we will be able to unwind the panels. e.g. Panel 7 from Wed seems to come before panel 4. Similarly, Panel 4 seems like it ought to have a precursor where we find out who the sacrifice is. Good fun. 9thGeneral (talk) 23:17, March 8, 2019 (UTC) :: Perhaps worth noting that today's panels are all consecutive and in the correct order, apart from Tarvek's comment in panel 5. Bkharvey (talk) 03:09, March 9, 2019 (UTC) : The Beast was created by Agatha's grandfather, so it's not'' that old, relatively speaking. --Geoduck42 (talk) 19:36, March 9, 2019 (UTC) I also realized that even though the minds of Castle Heterodyne and the Beast are quite old, the little train and castle clanks are still new, and presumably the wasp eater is not as old as an adult human (most similar species of real-life mustelids only live about 5 years naturally, up to about 15 in captivity). So that might be why they haven't really been a part of this conversation; they are way younger than even Tarvek is. : Interesting philosphical question. Is it the conciousness that matters or the physical being? Lucrezia has physically travelled through time, but her physical body is changing and being replaced. Look up the Ship of Theseus for some mental calisthenics. 9thGeneral (talk) 23:17, March 8, 2019 (UTC) :: This is somewhat related to the perennial question of how Zola could pull off Command Voice even with Lucrezia's consciousness inside her. I also wonder, since you bring up the wasp eater, whether it lost 2.5 years of its life expectancy in the timeskip. As a couple of people have said already today (bear in mind that these paragraphs are not in chronological posting order -- I guess we're just like Purple!), perhaps we should just lean back and enjoy the story. Bkharvey (talk) 02:44, March 9, 2019 (UTC) Some other questions I had that may or may not ever be answered: Does Purple's ability to sense "duration" mean their current age, or their total lifespan? Does someone's ability to resist the "ebb and flow" of time around him depend only on how long they lived, or also on how long they are "fated" to live? : The ebb and flow statements seem to imply that Tarvek is getting pushed around easily where Higgs has more time inertia. Since their conciousnesses can remember that they've "done this before", that would imply...something? Or we could repeat to ourselves, this is just a show we should really just relax. 9thGeneral (talk) 23:17, March 8, 2019 (UTC) : This of course is the problem with all time travel stories. If you can travel to the future, then the future is predetermined and there's no free will, so why bother doing anything? And if you can travel to the past, you can intervene and change history in a way that might prevent you from traveling to the past (or existing at all). But to answer your specific point, "duration" sure sounds to me like it has to include his full lifespan. And the way Purple talks suggests that for him the past and the future are much alike, which also argues for the full lifespan. (Robert Heinlein wrote a story, Life Line, about a guy who invented a machine that could tell you exactly when you were going to die.) Bkharvey (talk) 02:36, March 9, 2019 (UTC) Also, this is the first page where Purple gets a pronoun. It's possible that this will be changed up in the future, but it seems like Tarvek thinks that Purple's a "he" for now. Quantheory (talk) 21:16, March 8, 2019 (UTC) : Just like us (only more so since Purple can hear him), he wishes to be polite, and (especially back then) the masculine is taken to include the feminine, so "she" would be a presumption, and of course "it" would be a terrible insult to a sentient being. (Except for the Castle of course.) Bkharvey (talk) 02:44, March 9, 2019 (UTC) Okay, so, in today's first panel, that circular upside-down-Y-inside-a-circle thing at the intersection of the neck brace and the sash is part of what looks like a knife holster (with a very strange knife handle) that isn't there in any other panel since Purple appeared. What's up with that? Also, panel 4 is a bright yellow (and it's not just the wallpaper; their faces are all reflecting bright light too); is that the moment of Summoning? If so, Tarvek's comment in panel 5, the one that duplicates a previous comment of his, is at its proper point in time today. So Purple's "It is done" is retroactive to all of today's page. Also, the floating extra pieces of Purple's neck brace aren't exactly the same from panel to panel. Most likely that's just Phil being loose and/or careless, but just possibly it's trying to tell us something. Bkharvey (talk) 23:04, March 9, 2019 (UTC) : The "circular upside-down-Y-inside-a-circle thing" is the gun. Purple (as you call him) is holding it in front of his "mouthpiece" (from the reader's point of view), with the barrel (the "very strange knife handle") pointing up, but not quite straight up. You can see Purple's hand holding the pistol grip behind the tail of his word balloon. -- William Ansley (talk) 03:42, March 11, 2019 (UTC) :: Oh, I see what's confusing me! There are ''two circular upside-down-Y-inside-a-circle things! One of them is indeed part of the gun, and we see it in the first panel. But when he moves the gun out of the way, and/or holsters it, there is still a circular etc. at the intersection of the neck brace and the sash. Bkharvey (talk) 04:13, March 11, 2019 (UTC) P.S. Today Purple says "What are you?" to Higgs; Wednesday Higgs said the same thing to Purple. Cute. Bkharvey (talk) 23:06, March 9, 2019 (UTC)